Quick, think of the burliest video game engines that you've seen lately. Frostbite 3. Unreal Engine 4. That Luminous Studio demo Square Enix showed off at E3 2012. Project Cars. Pretty soon, you're going to have to add Snowdrop to that list.

Ubisoft first showed the tech behind its upcoming Tom Clancy game at E3 last year, with a surprise reveal that no one saw coming. With the Game Developers Conference happening right now, the French company's offering another peek under the hood of Snowdrop.